When I finally woke up from the nightmare of finding a head on my drive way, the head of the person I trusted and loved most, three weeks had gone by. The police, led by the same man in that big house who gave us a warning, closed the case and dismissed it as the actions of some crazy person who hated my friend. There were no gang wars or turf wars back then. People went to sleep at night and left their windows open. We did not hear ambulances and police sirens in the middle of the night.

We never believed the party would end, so we did not have any money saved. Life had been an ongoing party without control and restrictions. Soon, I saw my money stash decreasing very fast. I had to do something about this or I would find myself without money and consequently without dope. Everything has a solution though and I believed that marrying a rich girl would solve these problems. Her father was dead and her mother was a nice lady who did not like me much, but I did not care. I was after her daughter.

During this time, I was back to selling weed in the agricultural school where I was studying. Hundreds of students went there from many Latin American countries to learn how to make their lands fertile and productive. I should have been happy that I was going to such an excellent school, but I wasn’t. It was just a place to hide from reality. It was just a place where I could sell weed and continue feeding my cocaine frenzy. My roommate and I brought the drugs in twice a month when we would be allowed to leave campus and go home. We kept it hidden inside the speakers in our room. We were making a bundle of money.

I liked the school and I liked the respect I got from my father for being there. I liked the attention I got from my girlfriend for being there. I had my drugs and some respect. Life was getting better, but then things started to change in my mind. I did not want to spend my life working under the sun by day and studying by night. I wanted to be on the streets, my real home. I wanted to go out dancing and partying so we started going to town after hours. At first, we went out just to enjoy a couple of drinks. But then things got heavier.

Drugs and alcohol tend to be like this. At first, they are fun. You enjoy the party and the time you spend with your friends. But as time passes and the drugs drive their claws deeper into your heart and your body, they become demanding. They want more and more of your time until there is nothing left for other things. In a few months we quit school. We simply walked away without looking back on the efforts we made and the money our parents spent on our education.

We broke into my grandfather’s empty house and we slept on the floor. No one knew where we were or what we were doing. I remember sitting in that empty house doing drugs almost every hour. I remember we discussed what seemed like millions of plans about becoming rich and powerful. We had talked about leading a gang of drug dealers. None of these ever came true. We were just hiding behind a cloud of incompetence and self-pity. We did not have the money to start a business and I was sure we did not have the guts to kill our way to power over any piece of the city.

The days went by and nothing happened. Our lives were at a standstill. I would go visit my girlfriend in the afternoons when she was out of school. We would sit in her house watching television and she would cook dinner for me. Many times this was the only food I ate during the day. My parents knew I had quit school and they knew I was sleeping in the empty house. But they were just waiting for me to come home crawling and begging for mercy. I knew in my heart I would do it soon. But somehow, in my sick, drugged mind, I believed I would die before asking for their mercy.

Soon, I thought I came up with a solution to my problems. You see my father needed an heir and I needed to get back under his wing. The plan was for my girlfriend and I to have a baby. My girlfriend was a minor then. I was twenty-two and ready to go after her mother’s money. I was not looking at the consequences. I only thought of having an immediate solution to my problems. I needed to get back into my parent’s house so I could get money for my drugs.

But money was tough to get. I was getting irritated because I was not going anywhere with the pregnancy. I realized that the huge amounts of drugs I had taken was affecting my capability to reproduce. Thankfully, the day eventually came when she missed her period and I believed I was in heaven. I was welcomed into the house again, but with a reprimand for getting a girl pregnant. My soon-to-be mother in law threatened to send me to prison for supposedly raping her little girl. Everyone cried but after that we were finally married.

The wedding party was okay. My friends were there. My best man was my drug buddy and we had a blast all night. In fact, we shared a little cocaine to celebrate. My plan was working well. I was back home and I had my mother-in-law nailed to the wall.

But soon, the truth came out. Nothing was well. It turned out that my mother-in-law did not have money after all. All she had was the last thousand dollars from the insurance money she got when her husband died.

I talked to my father about getting an apartment and he said I had to work for that. In the meantime, I could stay at his house until the baby was born and that was it. It made me think that my plans were once again screwed up by people who did not care for me. At the back of my mind, I blamed my parents for how my life turned out. I felt that there was nothing I could do but take more drugs.

I was told to work at the farm and that they would take care of my wife. Yes, I did not have any money but I had a wife and a child on the way. The deal had gone completely sour and there was nothing I could do to fix it.

Our farm was located about two hundred kilometers away from home near a small city. I would buy cocaine and bring it with me to the farm. Out there, I could smoke weed and do cocaine all day long. No one cared. The employees could barely speak Spanish and they didn’t know what was going on.

Soon, I got tired of being by myself. I started going out to town every once in a while for a couple of drinks and then I drove back to the farm. Things were actually going great. I was growing corn and coffee. I had vegetables and in fact, I was making some honest money for the first time in my life. I was even growing fond of my wife and the life that was growing inside of her belly.

But in the life of a cocaine junkie, all good things always come to a quick end. I had grown unbelievably self-destructive. During the weekends, I kept buying more drugs to bring back to the farm. Soon, things started to fall apart. I did not have enough money to pay the workers or to buy fertilizer. I went way over my head and things started to go downhill from there.

Production in my farm fell miserably. There was no more money being made. I had to invent disasters so that my father would help me with more money. I used this money to keep up my cocaine habit and my constant partying. The farm was history. I was not interested anymore and I did not have the time to care for it. It was easier to just hang out with my new-found fellow cocaine addicts. I never gave my wife or my unborn child a single thought. Today was all that mattered - enough drugs for today, enough alcohol for today. Tomorrow? We will just have to deal with it when it comes.

Finally, the lie could not hold itself up anymore. It crumbled down on me. I was confronted by my father and I confessed my guilt. I confessed that I had spent thousands of dollars of his money on parties and drugs. I was sent to a shrink. I told the therapist that it was my parents’ fault because they were never there for me when I was growing up. I tried to convince him and myself that it was the lack of love and attention that made me this way. I tried to tell myself that none of this was my fault. This, of course, is another excuse we give ourselves for being weak. We keep telling ourselves, “no one loves me, I am alone.” This is garbage. Many people grow up alone and they grow up to be fine citizens of the world. The truth is, we are just lazy cowards looking for an excuse not to live life as we should.

My wife was due three months later and my father did not fall for the story I gave the psychiatrist. I did not know if he was trying to evade his guilt. I probably never will. My father and I did not discuss these matters then and we do not discuss them now.

I was told I had twenty-four hours to decide on my future. I had two options. The first was to pack my bags and walk away without money, without a family, without a wife and a kid. My father promised that he would care for them like they were his own but that I would never see my wife again. He also promised that I would never see my child, not even by coincidence. My father is a very serious man. He never threatens anyone and when he does, you better believe that he will do what he intends to do.

The second option was to go to rehab. If you are thinking about one of those detox spa places, you are very wrong. I was going to be sent to hell on Earth. I was going to be left in a rehabilitation center in the middle of nowhere for one year. One complete year was the deal.

After all the things I’ve seen in my life, the prospect of being sent to rehab didn’t scare me at all. So I said, “What the hell.” and agreed to do it. I knew I was going to be so far away from home, from my friends, from my drugs. But I said to myself “I am tough. I will survive and come out victorious.”